Google offers a variety of opportunities for PhDs who wish to gain industry experience. Through our Getting to Know a PhD series, we’ll provide a glimpse into some of these opportunities as well as the impactful projects PhDs at Google work on. Today we’re featuring Ian Zerny, a Software Engineer in our Aarhus office who interned on the Dart Language team.

So Ian, tell us about yourself and your PhD topic...
I’m Danish/Canadian and I completed my PhD under the supervision of Olivier Danvy at Aarhus University. During my studies I investigated techniques for the construction and inter-derivation of semantic descriptions for programming languages, in particular, for lazy languages, like Haskell. These techniques can be used to help design specifications for programming languages and to mechanically derive implementations for them.

I’m also a recipient of the Google European Doctoral Fellowship in Programming Technology. As part of the fellowship I was provided a Google mentor which was great for getting a different perspective on my research.

Why did you apply for an internship at Google?
Google has a strong reputation and works on a wide range of topics including the design and implementation of programming languages, which I find extremely interesting.

Was there a connection between your internship and your PhD topic?
My PhD topic was about design and specification of programming languages, while my internship and current work is about language implementation. The internship was a nice change of pace from dissertation writing and provided some concrete work within a related domain.

What did you work on during your internship with Google and what are you working on at Google now?
During my internship, I worked on optimizing the Virtual Machine (VM) for Dart, a new programming language for the web designed by Google. The Dart VM is a standalone VM for running Dart programs and is now about twice as fast as the fastest JavaScript VM.

Currently, I’m working on the open source Oilpan project, designing and implementing trace-based garbage collection for the Blink rendering engine in Google Chrome. Oilpan will make Chrome less memory intensive, more secure and easier to maintain.

What’s it like working on the Dart and Chrome team?
It’s great! Both teams are very dedicated and enthusiastic about their respective projects. Chrome has improved the way we use the web today and continues to push boundaries. The Dart project is an exciting attempt to provide web programmers with an alternative choice for writing web applications that is scalable and fast. Both projects are also Open Source and developed as part of a wider community. Working on them has been both challenging and exciting!

What key skills have you gained from your time at Google?
Technically, I’ve become a better programmer and gained practical experience with languages and tools, some new and some already known to me. On a higher level, I’ve gained experience working in the industry and with a large team.

You recently converted into a new grad SWE role. Did your internship experience impact your thoughts about a future career?
Yes. Specifically, it provided me with an accurate picture of what it would be like to work at Google. During my internship I worked with a great team on projects that are actively changing the landscape of the web. Based on my internship experience, I decided to apply for a full-time position and started straight after finishing my dissertation.

Why should a PhD student apply for an internship at Google? Did your internship experience impact your thoughts about a future career? Any advice to offer?
I strongly recommend applying for an internship. It’s a great way to learn about how programming technology is actively being used. Learning what it’s like to work in the industry and in a large team will also help to plan your career. My internship provided me with an accurate picture of what it would be like to work at Google. I worked with a great team on projects that are actively changing the landscape of the web. Based on my internship experience, I decided to apply for a full-time position and started straight after finishing my dissertation.

Try it out. You’ll learn a lot and it’s fun too!

Google is currently accepting applications for internships for PhDs. For more information, please visit our Google Students Job site.

When conducting interviews, I often get questions about our workspace and engineering environment. What IDEs do you use? What programming languages are most common? What kind of tools do you have for testing? What does the workspace look like?

Google is a company that is constantly pushing to improve itself. Just like software development itself, most environment improvements happen via a bottom-up approach. All engineers are responsible for fine-tuning, experimenting with, and improving our process, with a goal of eliminating barriers to creating products that amaze.

Office space and engineering equipment can have a considerable impact on productivity. I’ll focus on these areas of our work environment in this first article of a series on the topic.

Office layout

Google is a highly collaborative workplace, so the open floor plan suits our engineering process. Project teams composed of Software Engineers (SWEs), Software Engineers in Test (SETs), and Test Engineers (TEs) all sit near each other or in large rooms together. The test-focused engineers are involved in every step of the development process, so it’s critical for them to sit with the product developers. This keeps the lines of communication open.

Google Munich

The office space is far from rigid, and teams often rearrange desks to suit their preferences. The facilities team recently finished renovating a new floor in the New York City office, and after a day of engineering debates on optimal arrangements and white board diagrams, the floor was completely transformed.

Besides the main office areas, there are lounge areas to which Googlers go for a change of scenery or a little peace and quiet. If you are trying to avoid becoming a casualty of The Great Foam Dart War, lounges are a great place to hide.

Google Dublin

Working with remote teams

Google’s worldwide headquarters is in Mountain View, CA, but it’s a very global company, and our project teams are often distributed across multiple sites. To help keep teams well connected, most of our conference rooms have video conferencing equipment. We make frequent use of this equipment for team meetings, presentations, and quick chats.

Google Boston

What’s at your desk?

All engineers get high-end machines and have easy access to data center machines for running large tasks. A new member on my team recently mentioned that his Google machine has 16 times the memory of the machine at his previous company.

Most Google code runs on Linux, so the majority of development is done on Linux workstations. However, those that work on client code for Windows, OS X, or mobile, develop on relevant OSes. For displays, each engineer has a choice of either two 24 inch monitors or one 30 inch monitor. We also get our choice of laptop, picking from various models of Chromebook, MacBook, or Linux. These come in handy when going to meetings, lounges, or working remotely.

Google Zurich

Thoughts?

We are interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do you prefer an open-office layout, cubicles, or private offices? Should test teams be embedded with development teams, or should they operate separately? Do the benefits of offering engineers high-end equipment outweigh the costs?

Google Interns are located at offices all across the globe, and represent a broad diversity of backgrounds, concentrations and interests. Inspired by Steven Colbert’s Better Know a District, we’re bringing to you “Better Know an Intern!” The series introduces you to our interns across the globe, and will get you the scoop on the impactful projects they work on, their interests and passions, and what it’s really like to intern at Google straight from the source.

My name is Matthew Dierker, and I’m a rising junior in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! I grew up in Sugar Land, Texas (that’s really the name!) and played trumpet for 8 years through middle school and high school.

1. Of all the companies to apply for, why did you want to work at Google?
As a high school junior at a programming summer camp, I took a tour of Google’s Mountain View campus. I remember seeing the main campus and being amazed at how many amazing colorful things were there. From then on, I thought of Google as a dream job. In college I talked to Google at career fairs and slowly built up my Google swag collection. After my interview sophomore year, I talked to engineers on three teams (one of which was Google Voice) and the rest is history!

2. In what way(s) has Google impacted you, and how have you left an impact at Google?
Seeing a self-driving car in person for the first time was cool, but even cooler was getting Google Glass while still an intern and talking to a friend about her work on Project Loon. Google’s work is mind-bogglingly awesome sometimes, and it’s inspiring to think about how I fit in to the bigger picture.

I’ve been able to help too! When I first arrived at Google, my host gave me a couple of areas I could contribute to on Google Voice. I chose to build an internal API on the Voice infrastructure for programs that need to make or receive calls. I also rewrote Speak To Tweet using the API, and it’s now running on my code! The best part of it all has been my team. They’ve answered all my questions and made every day fun. Learning about infrastructure has been a new experience for me and it’s led to a great summer on Voice.

Finally, one impactful side project was our game of Intern Assassins. We had almost 250 interns sign up to play the game, and with some help from friends I wrote the website/texting system to power it all. As a player it was fun to be constantly suspicious, and as an organizer we had a rewarding game. I’m hoping to open source the system in the future!

3. What is the most interesting/exciting thing that you have been able to do as a Google intern? Your “Magic Moment”?
Most of the magic for me is in how cool every single day with the other interns is! Every Friday night, a bunch of us have board game night, and I love a game called Resistance that we play all the time there. I found a group of friends that I really liked, we planned adventures every weekend, and after each one we got to go back and code at Google. Whether it’s hanging out at a Google party on a roof or chilling in the ball pit at 2:00 AM after a hackathon, the entire summer has been an unbelievable experience.

If I had to pick just one moment, it would be getting to take a picture with Larry and Sergey. After Intern Assassins wrapped up, Larry and Sergey talked about it for a few minutes at a weekly company meeting called TGIF. We even got Alan Eustace (Google’s SVP of Knowledge) to “assassinate” Sergey with a three and a half foot spoon! It was a great way to end an awesome summer.

4. Aside from working for Google, what kinds of organizations/clubs/activities are you involved with in your community / around your school’s campus?
I help run a school project called Party Rock Illinois in which 30 people we sync 1600 ft. of Christmas lights, lasers, and LED panels to music. It’s been challenging with lots of setbacks, but when something works it’s an amazing feeling.

Outside of Party Rock, I’m one of two social chairs for the Association for Computing Machinery at UIUC. Hanging out in our lounges is an awesome way to make friends with people in your courses. I love it because it’s turned classmates into some of my best friends. I’m also a big lover of hackathons! Finally, I’m a Google Student Ambassador for UIUC. We’ve planned a scavenger hunt for freshmen, and have some other awesome events coming up this year!

5. What types of lessons/skills have you learned at Google that you will take back to school after this summer ends?
First, Google has taught me to be a better software engineer. In the code review process, my host showed me how to take working code and made it better working code. It’s a hard concept to grasp on my own because both versions work, but one is better!

In addition this summer, we hosted some ice cream weekends for interns at our corporate housing. At events like these, it’s sometimes hard to put your fear behind you, go up to someone, introduce yourself and try to make friends. Being able to do that is something I’ll definitely bring back to school in my role as a leader and as a Google Student Ambassador. Finally, I’m going to take back the excitement of working on the latest and greatest in tech by coding for devices like Google Glass and the Chromecast.

6. Any advice for students interested in being a Google intern?
The best advice I can give you is to just make something cool. Whether it’s at a hackathon or just in your house, make a game, play with a device, or just make “Hello World” on your screen and take it from there. Once you’re in college, take chances that seem interesting. It might be as simple as going to a Google tech talk, or the hackathon that’s at school, or even just talking to the people next to you in class. If you can get out of your dorm room and have a good time in computer science, you’re on the right track!

Google is proud to announce the judging panel for The AdMob Student App Challenge. Our six judges have either built apps or advised developers, and between them have accumulated hundreds of millions of downloads.

Toni Fingerroos: Toni Fingerroos is the CEO and founder of the mobile games company Fingersoft. He developed Hill Climb Racing which reached 1st place in top free games in the USA in Google Play and has been downloaded over 100 million times globally. In 2013 he received the Game Developer of the Year award in Finland. Fingerroos came up with the name Fingersoft when he was ten years old, with a passion for developing games. After years of making games for his friends to enjoy he wanted to learn more about business and economics. He co-founded two companies and also assumed managerial responsibility. After gaining experience from these businesses he was ready to start a company of his own that would make use of his skills and laid-back attitude. In 2012 he officially founded Fingersoft Ltd. pursuing his life-long dream of running an independent game studio.

Edward Kim: Edward Kim got his start in the Android development world by developing and entering his apps in various Android development contests. Most notably, he won 3rd place in Google's Android Developer Challenge 2, taking a $25,000 prize. He also won 1st place in Verizon's ‘Power Your App’ contest, taking a $75,000 prize. Edward Kim is the co-founder and CTO of ZenPayroll. Prior to co-founding ZenPayroll, Edward was the CEO and co-founder of Picwing.com, a Y Combinator-funded startup and photo-printing platform that was acquired in 2011. Edward holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Artavazd Mehrabyan: Artavazd Mehrabyan is co-founder & COO of PicsArt: a fun and full-featured mobile photo editing, drawing app, and art community for Android and iOS. He worked previously as Senior Software Architect at prominent web portal Lycos Europe. Artavazd has conducted practical classes in Software Architecture at the American University of Armenia, and has been a guest lecturer at Yerevan State Polytechnic. He is a graduate of the American University of Armenia.

Sana Choudary: Over the last two years Sana has been the CEO and co-founder of YetiZen, a cornerstone of the game developer ecosystem. This includes the YetiZen accelerator, the wildly popular games-focused accelerator and the YetiZen Innovation Lab, the only game developer community space of its kind for game developer business education and synergy in the new and ever evolving world of social mobile. It has served over 10,000 game developers in the last 12 months. Sana Choudary has a reputation for being a powerful force in creating successful entrepreneurs. She has been highly active in the entrepreneurial and gaming communities throughout her career as a leading member of Women 2.0, StartupWeekend; and as a co-founder of NYC’s largest entrepreneurial group, Ultra Light Startups. In addition to YetiZen, Sana chairs TiE SF and TiEcon Youth Track, the world's largest entrepreneurship conference. Through YetiZen, Sana is intimately involved with hundreds of startups, gaming veterans, investors, and gaming giants, giving her a unique and unparalleled perspective on the game space.

Jake Ward: Jake Ward oversees operations and programming for the Application Developers Alliance, including media relations, marketing, membership and corporate partnerships. He has more than 10 years of experience in public relations, marketing and public policy. He has led strategic communication and issue-advocacy campaigns on behalf of Fortune 100 companies, public interest groups and industry associations.

Taizo Son:Taizo San is CEO at Movida Japan, Chairman at GungHo Online Entertainment and Advisor at SoftBank. “I have worked fervently for the past 15 years to start new IT-related venture companies. In 2002 I founded GungHo, one of Japan’s most successful online gaming companies, and our flagship game Puzzle & Dragons is the world’s top grossing app for iOS and Android. With Movida Japan, a seed accelerator I founded in 2009, we aim to significantly boost the venture ecosystem in East Asia by 2030. I also serve as an Advisor at SoftBank, a Japanese Telecom and IT conglomerate with more than 1300 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide, founded and led by my brother Masayoshi Son.“

Our panel is excited to see what our participants come up with during the contest. Be sure to follow AdMob on Google + for any Challenge-related announcements, and to check out the Challenge website.

The AdMob Student App Challenge launched early last week, and while registration will remain open until March 31, it will be important for all teams to be aware of some key deadlines and events. See below for timeline of events, which is you can find on the AdMob Student App Challenge website as well.

Student registration window: through 31 March 2014

Competition window: through 15 April 2014

Deadline for submitting app for judge’s review: 31 March 2014

Deadline for submitting business report: 15 April 2014

Finalists Announcements: 15 May 2014

Global Winner Announcement: 28 May 2014

To stay up to date on any and all Challenge-related announcements, be sure to follow AdMob on Google +.